Manufacturing porous materials for different thin film applications is an application area, which has significance, for example, in sensor coatings, medicine and accumulator technology. In addition to the total amount of porosity, also the control of porosity distribution is critical in the control of porosity. In many coating methods it is challenging to control the uniform quality of both the total amount of porosity, size distribution and porosity distribution, and it would be preferable to design the target material so that the energy generated by laser pulses would disintegrate the material into particles of desired size and shape in a controlled manner.